[2][3] In agriculture, it has largely been replaced by higher-yielding Asian rice (O. sativa),[2] and the number of varieties grown is declining.

[4] It is also grown for cultural reasons; for instance, it is sacred to followers of Awasena (a traditional African religion) among the Jola people,[6] and is a heritage variety in the United States.

In the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Portuguese sailed to the Southern Rivers area in West Africa and wrote that the land was rich in rice.

[15][dubious – discuss] The seed was carried as provisions on slave ships,[3] and the technology and skills needed to grow it were brought by enslaved rice farmers.

Newly imported African slaves were marketed for their rice-growing skills, as the high price of rice made it a major cash crop.

[13] Not all Africans came to the Americas with knowledge in rice growing, due to the vast variabilities in cultures and ethnicities, but the practice of cultivation was shared throughout the Carolina plantations, which allowed the enslaved people to develop a new sense of culture and made African rice the primary source of nutrition.

[16] The tolerance of African rice for brackish water meant it could be grown on coastal deltas,[14][17] as it was in West Africa.

There are numerous stories about how the rice came to North America,[18] including a slave smuggling grains in her hair[3] and a ship driven in to trade by a storm.

[14][19] African rice is a rare crop in Brazil, Guyana, El Salvador and Panama, but it is still occasionally grown there.

Rice-growing regions of Africa are generally net rice importers (partly due to a lack of good local rice-processing capacity) so price increases hurt.

Subsidies of nerica seeds have also been criticized for encouraging the loss of native varieties and reducing the independence of farmers.

[21] Overall, O. glaberrima is considered a much more desirable and healthier[22] choice in places like Nigeria by West African farmers, where it is used to make Ofada rice because of its high nutrition content,[23] despite being less popular than O. sativa cultivars (as of 2019[update]).

[4] Generally, African rice has small, pear-shaped grain, reddish bran and green to black hulls, straight, simply-branched panicles, and short, rounded ligules.

It is drought- and deep-water-resistant, and tolerates fluctuations in water depth, iron toxicity, infertile soils, severe climatic conditions, and human neglect better than Asian rice.

[1][25] Some varieties also mature more quickly, and may be sown directly on higher ground, eliminating the need to transplant seedlings.

African rice tends to elongate rapidly if completely submerged, which is not advantageous in regions prone to short floods, as it weakens the plant.

[9] More recently, the nerica cultivars (new rice for Africa) have been developed using green revolution techniques like embryo rescue.

[30] Carolina Gold is an heirloom cultivar grown in the early United States, sometimes known as golden-seed rice for the colour of its grains.